


Speed Love

by Hotaru_Tomoe



Series: H.I.A.T.U.S. collection [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Blind Date, H.I.A.T.U.S. challenge, Humor, John writes fanfictions, M/M, Speed Dating, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:45:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13593273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotaru_Tomoe/pseuds/Hotaru_Tomoe
Summary: John has a celebrity crush on Sherlock, a consulting detective who solves cold cases. He collects photos and fanarts, and write fanfictions about him.One year later, he meets Sherlock in the most improbable place, a speed date evening.





	Speed Love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [H.I.A.T.U.S.](https://hiatustory.tumblr.com/post/170199221963/februarys-theme-is-valentines-day) challenge.  
> February theme is Valentine's Day, and I used this prompt: John is peer pressured into attending a Valentines Day blind speed dating night. After suffering through terrible conversation with a couple of women and a guy that’s just out of high school (yikes that was awkward) John suddenly finds himself sitting opposite the famous detective Sherlock Holmes who he’s had a celebrity crush on for the last year. AU where John and Sherlock meet after Sherlock becomes famous for solving cold cases.

"I'm sorry I can’t offer you a better accommodation, John."

"Don’t even mention it, please: you and Clara have already done so much for me."

John had just been dismissed from the army after being wounded; his sister and her wife had insisted that he spend the convalescence at their home, and they cleared the attic, turning it into a temporary bedroom.

"Dinner is ready," Clara shouted from the kitchen.

Telly was on and, at some point, the news aired the interview to a man in his thirties, tall, dark, with beautiful bright eyes and a voice so deep it caused John a shiver down his spine.

He was so rapt by his beauty, that it took him a few seconds to understand what the man was saying.

Was he talking about a murder in Stirling... of a hundred years ago?

"Who is that man?"

"Sherlock Holmes,” Harry answered, “you don’t know him because you have been many years abroad. He’s some sort of celebrity, a consulting detective specialized in cold cases."

"And is he good?"

"Very much: once he has cleared the name of a man who has been unfairly imprisoned for the murder of his wife, by finding out that the murderer was a neighbour. Cool, right?"

"Wonderful," John murmured, without taking his eyes off the television, where Holmes was still talking. He turned his head only when he heard Clara giggling.

"What?"

"Well, you're eating him with your eyes."

"Don’t be surprised, love” Harry cooed, “John plays for both teams."

In other circumstances, John would have been embarrassed to be outed by Harry to his sister-in-law, but at that moment all his attention was focused on Sherlock Holmes.

 

In the weeks that followed, John Watson learned that it was never too late to have a celebrity crush. He had always thought that the kind of infatuation belonged exclusively to the teens years and vanished when one grew up, but he discovered that it wasn’t like that.

In a short time, he had found everything on the Internet about Sherlock Holmes: unofficial biographies, gossip, the list of the cases he had solved, and photos, tons of photos that he stored on his computer, in a folder with the innocent name of "Patients medical records".

He had watched all Holmes interviews and was a regular reader of his blog, the Science of Deduction, despite being very technical and difficult to understand, for those who didn’t have some scientific knowledge (in fact, sometimes John had the impression of being the only reader). Besides, Holmes couldn’t be called a sociable and accommodating person: both in the interviews and on the blog, he was sharp and sarcastic, so it wasn’t surprising that people only admired him from afar, but nobody was willing to contact him directly.

To tell the truth, John didn’t mind Holmes’ manners: sometimes he was histrionic, as when he was annoyed by some stupid questions from a journalist, and he got rid of them with a rude _"Piss off"_ , but he was honest and openly said what he thought without any filter, and this helped to make him special, almost unique in John’s eyes.

John refused to think he was obsessed with Holmes: his was only a _deep admiration_ for a clever and brilliant man, a man who thought outside the box, with a magnetic personality, beautiful like a Greek god and... and anyway John wasn’t alone in it!

Holmes was well known on the Internet, so much so that he had his own fandom and people who drew portraits of him, stored in John's computer in the "Patients medical records 2" folder, and even wrote stories about him.

At first, the idea of someone writing fictional stories about another person's life seemed strange, almost intrusive to him, and he was reluctant to read them.

However, one evening there was nothing interesting to watch on telly, so John opened one of these stories on his computer, just to pass the time, you know, a half hour of reading before going to sleep.

When he looked at his watch again it was two o'clock, he had created an account under the nickname Northumberland_boy, and had 56 bookmarks already.

Well, okay, perhaps his ~~obsession~~ admiration for Holmes was a little bigger than he thought.

The first time he caressed the idea of writing a story (fanfiction, technically) about Holmes or, to be more precise, about him and Holmes, John wondered briefly what his life had become, but then he told himself that there was nothing wrong with it: his therapist had been the first one to encourage him to write, as part of the therapy, so he was just following her advices.

Somehow.

Since he still possessed a minimum of survival instinct, the original character he created as a collaborator and friend of Holmes, wasn’t named John Watson (among his colleagues could hide an unsuspecting fan of the consulting detective, and John wanted that aspect of his life to remain private), so he chose his middle name, Hamish, which no one knew, and his mother maiden surname, Lorne.

In his story, Hamish Lorne was the new neighbour of Sherlock Holmes, a pathologist who worked in a city hospital and suspected that some apparent suicides could be murders instead, so he turned to Holmes for help. Indeed a serial killer was responsible for those dead, Hamish and Sherlock found him and, at the end of the adventure, they became friends.

His medical knowledge helped him write a credible storyline, but perhaps he put too much effort in it for nothing, he thought with a smile, as he posted the story: he didn’t think anyone would read it.

Then John had two days of intense work at the clinic, because he had to cover for a colleague who had broken an ankle falling off his bicycle, so he completely forgot about his fanfiction.

When he opened the site again, he gasped: in just two days it had 1,500 hits, and had received 70 kudos and 40 comments.

Stupidly perhaps, he felt happy and flattered by that unexpected response, and spent his lunch break answering every comment. He also felt encouraged to write new stories about Sherlock and Hamish, and immediately started thinking about a new storyline.

Hamish became Sherlock's right-hand man, colleague and bodyguard, the chronicler of their adventures, the one who watched his back, worried about him, treated him when he was injured, the only one Sherlock trusted.

It was in the fifth story that John poured his most secret fantasies: Sherlock and Hamish had just risked being killed by a gang of thugs and, while they were returning home, Hamish pushed Sherlock in an alley, kissed him passionately and confessed his feelings. He was waiting to be rejected, but unexpectedly Sherlock hugged him and returned the kiss. The evening ended in Sherlock's flat, with their clothes scattered between the living room and the bedroom, and well... from there on the story earned the E rating with which John had tagged it.

It had a huge success in the fandom.

He wasn’t doing anything wrong, he told himself once again, those were just fantasies about a man he had a celebrity crush on, and anyway it wasn’t like he would ever meet Sherlock in real life, or that the detective would read his stories.

 

_A year later, February 14th_

 

"Harry, no."

"You can’t refuse, Clara and I have already signed you up."

"I can always pretend to be dead, which I would like to do right now."

"Oh, stop being a drama queen: it's just to make you spend a evening different from the others."

"My evenings are fine as they are, thank you."

"You didn’t have a date in ages, and today is Valentine's Day!"

"Not a good reason to talk with some random strangers."

John shook his head in disbelief at the entry form: what the hell was his sister thinking when she signed him up for a blind speed dating night?

"Look, you don’t have to take anybody to bed if you don’t like them."

"Oh, thank heaven for small mercies."

John seemed unmovable, so Harry played another card.

"Clara and I just wanted to make you a nice surprise..." she murmured apologetically.

John rubbed his face and sighed: "Listen, it's not that I don’t appreciate the thought, you're very nice, but..."

"Maybe you’ll have fun! Maybe it’ll change your life! You can’t know if you don’t try."

Harry wouldn’t give up so quickly, and after all John still lived in their attic without paying the rent, he could make this little effort.

"Okay," he agreed.

"Oh great... now, if you didn’t look like a man sentenced to death, it would be almost perfect."

"Don’t ask too much."

 

As soon as he stepped into the room where the dating night took place, John groaned in annoyance: it was awful and flashy, decorated with pink garlands and heart-shaped balloons everywhere. He pondered whether to run away, but Harry was probably still out there, and Clara was checking the back door, so he resigned himself to put a pin with his name on his sweater, pulled out the form with his informations, and sat down at a table.

Dates began shortly after: six minutes to understand if two people could get along, when normally a whole life wasn’t enough.

John shook his head, increasingly skeptical: he should had insist and stay home; he was writing a new fanfiction, and he got to the point where Hamish woke Sherlock with a blowjob, after they...

A woman in her thirties sat down in front of him.

"Annalise," she smiled, holding out her hand.

"John."

Information forms were exchanged, then John asked politely: "Why are you attending a blind speed dating night?"

"I'm glad you asked me. In short, I tried everything to find a man to share my life project with. I’m a simple and normal person, with simple and normal tastes, and I don’t ask much after all: a decent house with a beautiful garden, two or three children and a dog, or a cat, in case the children are allergic, friends, many of them, and a busy social life. These are simple and normal things, aren’t they? Everyone wants them, right? That's right, and yet you haven’t any idea how difficult it is to find the right person. No, you think you know it, but if you haven’t gone through what I've been through, you don’t know it, trust me. I tried to approach them as a best friend, as a confidant, and it didn’t work. I was introduced to them by friends, because I thought that perhaps an external eye could be more objective than mine, but it was useless. I turned to a dating agency that claimed to be the best in city, but they just were a bunch of incompetents, because you know what they dared to tell me? That nobody was interested in my profile. Do you think it's possible? Nobody interested in a simple and normal person? No, that’s not possible, they just aren’t able to do their job. Finally I tried astrology, but trust me, you don’t want to know how it ended, so when I saw the flyer of this event, I said to myself: why not? Annalise, you have tried all, try this too, and then, if you go there without any expectations, you could even be surprised. You can’t know it until you try it, I always say that, and I'm sure you'll agree with me, and then..."

Six minutes. Annalise was able to talk non-stop for all the six minutes available, taking a breath so few times that John feared she would drop dead to the ground for lack of oxygen. And she gave him the beginning of a migraine.

When she asked for his phone number, John merely raised the index finger of his left hand and moved it slowly in denial.

The second woman who sat down at his table was a few years older, but seemed less verbose.

She took John's form, but after reading a few lines, she shook his head disapprovingly.

Not a good move to put John in a good mood.

"I haven’t said anything yet, and I already made you angry?" He asked sarcastically.

"You wrote here that you're a doctor," she said accusingly.

"And... is it bad?" John asked, incredulous.

"I hope you are aware that all the medical books are written by pharmaceutical companies for the sole purpose of selling useless drugs."

Oh Christ, a tin hatter, great! More than an event for Valentine's Day, that seemed like a gathering of psychopaths.

"May I know what your enlightened opinion is based on?"

"Ah, and you're also omnivorous," the woman continued, completely ignoring his question.

"I like having a diversified diet, yes."

"That is wrong, and it's tragic that you're not aware of it. The only correct diet is the applearianism, which I follow. Even though I'm trying to convert myself to breatharianism."

"In this case I don’t think that our eventual relationship would last long."

The woman got up from her chair well before time runs out, and John took the opportunity to write down some notes for his next fanfiction.

The third person was male, called George. And so far, there would have been nothing wrong with it, because John had specified on his form he was bisexual.

Problem was that George was young, very young, with a baby and beardless face, and John was about to offer him a glass of warm milk with biscuits, and then send him to bed because it was already past nine p.m..

"How old are you?" He asked nervously.

"Eighteen," the boy answered, giving John’s form a glance.

"Can I check your identity card?"

"Don’t worry, you wouldn’t do anything illegal with me, unless you want to."

"Wh-what? No!" John gasped.

"Don’t be fooled by my age: I'm already very experienced and I can prove it to you."

"Dear Lord, I could be your father."

"Ooh, you're one of those. Well, I have no problem calling you Daddy."

John wished he could bleach his ears to erase what he had heard.

"Please, stop it!"

"Odd,” George replied, “usually Sugar Daddies adore us Twinks."

John didn’t know what the hell he was talking about and didn’t even want to know.

"I see you're a doctor, but exactly what do you do, are you a dentist or a plastic surgeon?"

"No, just a GP."

"Oh," George sighed in disappointment, "then I’ll go. No offense, but I'm looking for someone with the big money."

 _"Enough, after that I'm leaving,"_ John told himself, because the evening was proving far more terrifying than his dire predictions.

But then he saw a black coat flutter, and in front of him sat down the man for whom he had a secret celebrity crush for more than a year, the man on whom he wrote E rating fanfiction, the consulting detective who solved impossible cases, Sherlock Holmes in flesh and bones.

And no HD photos that John had downloaded from the Internet did justice to the beauty of his face, the shape of his lips and the thousand shades of colour in his eyes.

Shocked, John stood looking at him open-mouthed for a long time, saying nothing, only blinking slowly.

"If this were a competition to convey the worst impression you would win hands down," Sherlock finally said, bored.

"S-Sorry, but you don’t run every day into a celebrity like you, in a place like this."

"I'm not that famous."

"You are to me. You know, I'm your fan and I always read your blog... you're really amazing in your work."

"Yes, I know," Sherlock merely replied, without thanking him, but John didn’t take offence: he had seen all his interviews, and knew that Sherlock was only being Sherlock.

Sherlock, on the other hand, seemed rather surprised to see that John hadn’t been offended by his manner, so he reached for his form and read it carefully: his bored expression changed radically, and a strange glint lit up in his eyes.

"Oh, world is small!" He laughed.

John frowned and tilted his head to one side, "I don’t understand, what do you mean?"

Sherlock paused briefly, then looked him straight in the eye and said slowly: "Nice to meet you, John... or I should say Northumberland.underscore.boy."

"W... wh..." John wheezed like a fish out of water, then covered his face with his hands and wished to die instantly, wished that Satan in person would appear in a cloud of sulfur and drag him to hell: Sherlock knew his pseudonym, knew that John wrote stories about him.

"You-you have..."

"Read all your fanficions, yes."

"And how do you know that I am... am..." John didn’t even try to deny it, it would have been completely useless.

"If you're a fan of mine, you know my methods: I deduced it. Obviously, Hamish is the author's stand-in; the character has excellent medical skills and is updated on medicines and therapies, so the author is a doctor. In action scenes, Hamish adopts military techniques when there is a shooting, when he engages in a fight or disarms his opponents, or when he protects me, a clue that the author was a soldier, but is no longer, otherwise he wouldn’t have the time to write all those stories. Therefore the author is a former military doctor who now works as a civilian, obviously gay or bisexual with experience, given the detailed and anatomically accurate description of the sex scenes: there aren’t many people who fill this profile, and you wrote on your form that you are a doctor, former soldier, bisexual. Sure, you don’t mention your writing hobby, but you're taking notes on that piece of paper for a new story, I guess."

_"Don’t think about the blowjob you're writing, don’t think about the blowjob you're writing, don’t think about the blowjob you're writing, don’t think about the blowjob you're writing..."_

"... and then you blushed, as if you had done something that the social norms consider unbecoming, for example writing about us in bed together."

Shit!

"I-I'm sorry... I am!” John stammered, looking at the floor, “I know it's strange... but believe me, I didn’t want to objectify you."

He was in trouble, Holmes could made a scene or sue him, for all he knew.

"But you didn’t."

"What?" John jerked his head up and noticed that Sherlock wasn’t angry. In fact he was wearing an amused smile on his face.

"There are a lot of fanfictions about me: most of them are atrocious, but yours have something different."

"Oh,” John swallowed and finally the grip of embarrassment loosened. “And is it good?"

"Yes: In almost all the other stories, the original characters the author inserted, ends up becoming the only protagonist, and plots are far-fetched and inconclusive. Instead, you can write a true detective story, even if too much glamourized. I also like the role you have carved out for Hamish and the relationship he has with me; I never thought about taking an assistant, because every person I met was just too stupid, but I think a man like Hamish could fit that role."

"I'm flattered," John murmured, then he noticed that Sherlock was still looking at him with deep interest.

"Is there anything else you'd like to know about me?"

"Yes, I'm wondering how much of your true self there is into Hamish,” Sherlock leaned towards him, “and if yours are just words, or if you'd be able to do what you write."

John remembered the sex scenes he had written between Sherlock and Hamish: on the bed, on the couch, in the shower, on the stairs... and he was deeply embarrassed again, so he tried to deflect.

"I was a soldier, been in Afghanistan, I think I would be a great right-hand man or a bodyguard."

"Don’t play coy, John, I'm not thinking about that," Sherlock said: he looked like he was having lot of fun. "And neither are you."

"N-no? Oh... oh God, "John whispered as he felt Sherlock's foot stroke his ankle. He looked around frantically, but nobody cared about them and, fortunately, the tablecloth was long enough to cover what they were doing.

"Normally I don’t read entertainment fiction, but your description of sex scenes are incredible and have caught my attention."

Sherlock's voice was warm and deep and so sensual that John feared he would come only by listening to him, even without his foot stroking his calf.

"So erotic..."

Sherlock's foot reached his knee and John reflexively spread his legs to accommodate him, but he stopped there.

"Are these your fantasies?"

John had to swallow several times before he could answer: "I thought it was obvious."

"Mmh, and tell me, have you ever masturbated thinking about what you wrote?"

"I..." John whined, his face burning.

"Tell me, John," Sherlock continued, implacable.

John wiped the sweat around his lips and murmured, "Yes."

As a reward, Sherlock's foot began to move again, rubbing on his thigh.

"I’ll tell you a secret: me too."

His voice became even deeper and John bit his lips to avoid letting out a moan, caused by the image his mind had created, while Sherlock's foot approached inexorably his groin, and John would let him do it, he would let him do anything, because that was an erotic dream that came true.

The six minutes passed, the bell rang and a woman approached their table, motioning for Sherlock to get up.

"Can you move? It's my turn now."

Sherlock and John jumped, remembering only then where they were; the detective moved his foot away, but didn’t get up, waiting to be dismissed by John, but the doctor said anything: he wasn’t so crazy to let Sherlock escape.

"Well?" The woman repeated, annoyingly.

The two men looked into each other's eyes and then exclaimed: "Piss off!"

"Fuck you both," she growled, moving away, and the two burst out laughing inappropriately.

"God," John said, rubbing his face. "This is the most surreal evening of my life."

"Quite strange even for my standards," agreed Sherlock.

"Can I ask you something? Why are you here tonight?"

"Not because I was forced by my sister nor because I was looking for company, don’t worry."

"I'm not worried," John protested, but Sherlock gave him an amused look, as if to say he didn’t believe him.

"I’m here for work. There's a serial killer who has been dormant for ten years, but now he has started killing again."

John straightened up in his chair, forgetting his unsatisfied erection, and became serious.

"Have you already identified him?"

Sherlock took a fraction of second longer than usual to answer, because he had been fascinated by the sudden transformation of the man sitting in front of him.

John was more and more interesting.

"Don’t turn around: he is sitting two tables behind you, and it seems he has just lured his victim, they are getting up to leave."

Sherlock got up to follow them, and John clutched the tablecloth convulsively: in real life Sherlock was always in dangerous situations and he was doing great alone, but he felt the strong impulse to follow him to watch his back, just like in his stories.

"So, do you come with me, Hamish? Or better, John?” Asked Sherlock, buttoning his coat, “Do we want to capture a serial killer, and see how the evening ends?"

John threw the pin with his name on the table and stood up.

"I'm ready when you are."

 

*

 

Several hours later, John looked at the ceiling of Sherlock’s bedroom, breathing hard, his body still shivering with pleasure, while Sherlock, next to him, was cleaning himself up with John’s vest.

God, he had to thank Harry and Clara for signing him up for that blind speed dating night; his sister was right: it had changed his life for real.

A incredulous laugh bubbled in his chest, "Oh, by the way: Happy Valentine's Day. The best of my life."

"Mmh" Sherlock approved, lying down next to him and stroking John’s leg with his.

"I still can’t believe I met you like this: it looks like the plot of one of my fanfictions."

"And tell me, John,” he murmured, “did I inspire you for another story?"

John laughed again, ran a hand through his sweaty hair and stretched out his other arm to draw Sherlock in a possessive hug. He hadn’t missed the implications hidden behind Sherlock's words about other stories about them, as if to say that theirs wasn’t just a one night stand.

He kissed him on the forehead and sighed happily.

"I'm not going to post what we've just done: this is confidential, for my eyes only."

"What about a private collection?"

"Sounds good."

Sherlock's fingers played with the sparse hair on John's chest, then they closed around his nipple, making him hiss with pleasure.

"Do you want to write the sequel?"

John rolled on Sherlock with a playful growl.

"You bet!"


End file.
